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I take it your a fan of Adam Sandler, then? 
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Jun 5, 2016 20:34
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Werewolf: the Forsaken, 2nd Edition Shadow Gifts! Gift of Death
Gift of Dominance
Gift of the Elementals
Gift of Evasion
Gift of Insight
Gift of Inspiration
Gift of Knowledge
Nature's Gift
Gift of Rage
Gift of Shaping
Gift of Stealth
Gift of Strength
Gift of Technology
Gift of Warding
Gift of Weather
Next time: Wolf Gifts Mors Rattus fucked around with this message at 20:46 on Jun 5, 2016 |
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Jun 5, 2016 20:40
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Poltergrift posted:here's another instance of "how I would fix Beast." Use this as a reskin for Promethean and I'm game.
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Jun 5, 2016 20:40
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Poltergrift posted:I know it's been done many times, and everyone has pretty much come to the conclusion that it's pointless, but just to get it off my chest, here's another instance of "how I would fix Beast." I don't know how well it could be run at a glance but this is a cool idea for something.
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Jun 5, 2016 20:47
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That's really more the kind of thing that comes to mind when I hear a game has been titled 'Sin Eater'.
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Jun 5, 2016 21:09
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SirPhoebos posted:I take it your a fan of Adam Sandler, then? About as much as I am with Beast and the like!
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Jun 5, 2016 21:18
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Warbirds was reviewed in this very thread. Several supplements have been released dealing with using the rules for different eras of real world air combat to mad sciencery. But today I’m going to point out that there was recently released in a Bundle of Holding bundle a first-time anywhere supplement. What is that supplement? Climb into your space suits, grab your asses firmly with both hands and prepare for lift of because…. Warbirds: Space Age is blasting off. It’s short, 31 pages, so this won’t be long or crazy in-depth. It picks up from the original setting. The Guild is supreme, they fly around in their tricked out prop planes and dominate against lesser aircraft. That is until a new island shows up, huge and unclaimed, that kicks off the biggest war Azure has ever seen. Big wars mean scores of combatants and The Guild starts getting its poo poo kicked. Hard. Losing pilots left, right and center, the squadron commanders shout a collective ‘gently caress THIS poo poo’ and raid The Guild equipment vaults. Pilots start launching in jet fighters toting gatling style cannons and self-guiding missiles against prop planes. But that doesn’t end the war. No way. Nuclear fusion rockets do. Rapidly the Guild takes the lead in space exploration by funding the Azure Space Agency. Missions go to the moon and moonlets surrounding the, recently revealed, gas giant that is Azure. Satellites are launched, planets are explored and Azure seems to be the only place capable of supporting life in system. Space is mostly written off until someone takes a closer look at the LaGrange points. It’s there The Guild and ASA find the next great discovery. Mother fuckin’ Mass Relays. Okay, not really Mass Relays, but jump gates. One leads to the Galactic Neighborhood, where mankind comes charging and, more or less, assumes the role of the Orks in their primitive but highly effective fighters; the other leads to a red dwarf surrounded by an asteroid field. And that asteroid field is rife with floatstone. And that Ork comment is no joke. Humans are the only ones with the resource base to expend floatstone in their nuclear rockets. And Azure has a higher gravity than most worlds, so humans are stronger, faster and capable of withstanding higher acceleration than the other species in space. Mankind even built lasers and plasma weapons over transistors, so most human technologies outside of ‘Go fast’ and ‘blow poo poo up’ are woefully underdeveloped. There’s a bunch of different alien races from low-grav world scholars, reptilian soldiers that seem to act with one mind to, the funniest, a race of cyborgs whose technology and implants completely fizzle out in the presence of humanity’s nuclear rockets. They even have simple rules to make your own alien races. Actual rules haven’t changed. You need the core book to play. But the rockets humans use knock out most electronic systems and force alien craft to engage the human fighters in dogfights, which most alien craft are not built for. Downside, the rockets give away human positions and are easy for heat seeking missiles to track. Most of the vehicle stats aren’t different and there are some sample space craft of all sizes in the back of the book. Of note is that human capships are worse than their alien counterparts in all areas but speed, and they can escape at a moment’s notice because of their engines. Most combat won’t be happening in deep space, but around planetary bodies, gates or artificial constructs. And that’s really it. 31 pages to take your Warbirding from the skies to the cosmos.
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Jun 5, 2016 22:48
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Also Warbirds and Warbirds Space age are in the Bundle of Holding now.
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Jun 6, 2016 00:36
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 Part 14: The Finale (also I wish I had the foresight to end in 13 updates but c’est la vie) The last part of this section gives sample NPC’s with a bit more backstory than generic thug or car salesman. I’ll cover a few of the more notable ones, as some of them tie directly into the aforementioned set pieces and reveal quite a few plot twists in the process. Joseph Moore A brilliant physicist and university professor, he concocted several revolutionary hypothesis on the nature of space and time, but as of yet they are still untested and unpublished. These ideas were often ignored by his peers in the scientific community but the God Machine noticed and was quite interested. Unfortunately, one late night spent in deep study, he succeeded in his proof, and in doing so opened up his mind and enabled him to see and understand things beyond time and space. This is not healthy for your brain and sanity. This knowledge opened up a doorway to place where time was infinite but fleeting and he was now at a terrible risk of losing his mind. But a loud voice spoke to him and offered him a way out. He took it, and in doing so become one with the God Machine. Now he leads a normal existence doing what he did before, while the God Machine uses his mind to calculate entry points in time and space for Angels to enter. He’s not very talkative now, his speech is oddly stilted until you get him talking about time or physics. Do that and suddenly it’s like he’s another person, demonstrating an almost unparalleled understanding of the subject and becoming very interested in the conversation instead of wandering off.  Melissa Charles A woman with a rather unfortunate string of bad luck which started when she was 14, smoking outside an abandoned warehouse. She saw several inhuman figures in tan jumpsuits come from a trapdoor in the floor. They were being ordered around by a professional looking woman, and under her direction assembled a strange mechanical device. Once completed they turned it on for an hour before disassembling it and leaving the same way they came. Shortly afterward their town experienced an earthquake, the first in more than a century. A few years later her curiosity got the better of her when she noticed some people going into an abandoned restaurant in a strip mall. They were performing a human sacrifice. She would have left but was terrified that if she tried they’d notice and add her to the night’s events. So she watched, and after they’d left recovered a piece of bloody cloth belonging to the victim. Since then she’s become obsessed with the strange and supernatural, and seeing the wealthy and powerful at these places has made her incredibly paranoid and fearful of the police and other authority figures. Still, she’s amassed quite a large collection of relics and curios and is willing to talk to people about them, provided she can trust them. Trust doesn’t come easy to one who can see the strange and supernatural in the world. Her home hides an advanced security system and hidden wire mesh has turned it into a Faraday cage.   Lieutenant Samuel Hacket A man who loved the military life, he was given training, pay, vacation time, it was more than he expected to get in life. Unfortunately it wasn’t long lived. He was chosen to be part of an experimental training program and received orders to meet up with some civilian contractors. The training largely involved him being strapped into a machine that monitored his every move, every action, even his breathing and heart rate. His memories of these sessions are spotty at best but he does remember feeling exhausted afterwards, with the taste of copper in his mouth. After 6 months of this he was checked out and sent back to the division for further orders feeling not particularly well trained after the ordeal. His first exercise was another rendezvous with his trainers who gave him a task which normally required at least a dozen people to accomplish, and no one else to do it with. He went for it anyway, after all they might just be analyzing how he deals with a seemingly hopeless situation. What he didn’t expect was that the rounds being fired at him seemed all too real. The bullets cracked as they flew past him and the explosives threw dirt and shrapnel at him. His hearing, sight and physical condition had all seemingly improved but he noticed something very worrying happening. He wasn’t really thinking of what he was doing, his body seemed to be acting on it’s own. He actually tried to stop, tried to even just close his eyes for a moment, but he couldn’t. He wasn’t in control any more, he was a puppet with something else pulling the strings. He also realized that, just like his enemies, he was using live rounds as well. He was forced to kill other soldiers, in sometimes brutal and horrific ways, and could do nothing about it. That night he escaped, not wanting to be part of this any more. But is getting away from the God Machine really that easy? (No it is not)  The Candle Maker This angel has a very specific task. Periodically, and presumably when the God Machine needs a bit more energy to create infrastructure, someone must burn. The specifics of the person vary, based on whatever inscrutable criteria the God Machine is using. Sometimes it must be someone experiencing a particular emotion. Other times it could just be someone fitting a specific physical profile. Either way the Candle Maker takes it’s job very seriously and will do it’s best to locate a prime specimen for the fire. The fire must burn for several hours and it will attempt to stop any effort made to snuff it out beforehand. Thankfully the fire it creates is of the mundane variety and fire extinguishers and other fire suppressants can keep the person alive long enough that it’s window of opportunity passes. The Candle Maker does not have a physical form but it’s presence causes the ambient temperature to rise and any nearby fires to behave erratically, jumping and flickering for no other discernible reason.  The Lady in Red Another angel, this one with a slightly more complex purpose. Their job is to make people meet and fall in love, which sounds great on the surface. Unfortunately it doesn’t take into account things like their current relationships. They are given the names and a location, and once they find their target they will do whatever it takes to get them together. Often this means distancing or destroying their current romantic relationship, as well as any other relationship they might have that would distract them from the new love of their life. They’ve found most success in getting the people to meet seemingly by chance, whether it’s accidentally getting next to each other in line in a coffee shop or a minor fender bender. And while the Lady in Red focuses on lust and enticement they are not above maiming and murdering to get their way. After all mourning the death of someone close can put you in a very emotionally vulnerable place.    This probably sounded better on paper Afterword That about sums it up. The last section of the Chronicles book are appendices containing all the conditions, services and equipment in a single, easy to reference location.This is a VAST improvement over their prior layout in earlier editions. Overall I really like the game, and I especially like the Onyx Path seems to legitimately recognize the flaws present in World of Darkness and attempted to fix them with varying degrees of success. They’ve reworked the merits, especially the fighting styles, so that they’re no longer game breaking. The addition of the material from Hunter, the professional training merit and the monster toolkit, add a lot to the game that was missing before. They also made the combat option present in Hunter the new standard which makes guns significantly more dangerous but in a fairly reasonable and evenly handled way. In World of Darkness guns were just vaguely frightening, in that two people could shoot a lot of bullets at each other and only result in a lot of grazes, near misses, and awkward moments spent reloading. Now when guns come out things have gotten very serious, as a few shots are all it takes to put someone in the ground, and that’s assuming they aren’t some sort of minmaxed John Woo pastiche. The flat xp costs make obtaining the higher end abilities possible, compared to the prior edition where getting that 5th dot in an attribute would cost several months of regular sessions. And that’s assuming you weren’t spending the xp on anything else. It’s not a perfect system but it is simple. You could get someone new into it fairly quickly as almost every roll is going to be “Add these two numbers and look for 8’s or above.” Ironically enough though, those people probably won’t have the same issues I’ve found with players who have extensive experience in fantasy role playing. Which is ultimately forgetting that many modern conveniences exist. They’ll come up with complex plans that involve sending smoke signals to their man across town and you’ll have to remind them that phones exist and everyone has one. They’ll desperately try to think of a way to get across town without remembering that cabs or uber exists, or that they likely own a vehicle themselves. Similarly, based on the type of game and how deep these conspiracies go, law enforcement might get involved and could even be willing to help the players out, especially in a more rural setting where the sheriff is someone everyone knows personally. It can be hard, after years of charging into dungeons and pretty much murdering and stealing with reckless abandon, to go back into a game where you're suddenly a member of society and all those social contracts come back into play. So that pretty much wraps up Chronicles of Darkness. If you ever want to run a grim and gritty game of people and/or the supernatural I'd give it a shot.  Honestly I have no idea. Probably bad
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Jun 6, 2016 01:30
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The way new Werewolf gifts work with renown is pretty cool! Like Geist, but better. Also reinforces the thought I had: Can a mage beat a werewolf? Sure. But first that mage had better get themselves teleported at least to the other side of the country or else they're going to get wrecked before they even figure out what they're going to do.
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Jun 6, 2016 01:55
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Werewolf: the Forsaken, 2nd Edition Wolf Gifts! Gift of Change
Gift of Hunting
Gift of Pack
Besides Gifts, werewolves have access to Rites - special rituals that they can use to enact magical effects. There are two kinds. Wolf Rites are potent, calling on the Uratha's spiritual nature, and must be led by werwolves. Pack Rites instead call on the bonds of the pack, using them as a channel, and affect all members, even non-werewolves. A Wolf-Blood can lead those. All Rites rely heavily on symbolism, and the exact details can vary wildly between tribes and packs. However, all components of the symbolism must be included in the ritual performance for the rite to work, even if the actions that symbolize these things only make sense to the ritemaster. Typically, werewolves learn new rites from other werewolves or from spirits, but some werewolves have recorded rites in writing, as well. Rites are almost exclusively Extended actions, and usually done with help from the rest of the pack. Wolf Rites One Dot
Two Dots
Three Dots
Four Dots
Five Dots
Pack Rites One Dot
Two Dots
Three Dots
Four Dots
Five Dots
Next time: Fetishes
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Jun 6, 2016 02:47
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Jun 6, 2016 02:50
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I used to defend the Keifer Sutherland movie Mirrors, since it had such a cool premise. See also Heinlein's The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag, where the mirror-people are art critics.quote:It’s not a perfect system but it is simple. You could get someone new into it fairly quickly as almost every roll is going to be “Add these two numbers and look for 8’s or above.” Ironically enough though, those people probably won’t have the same issues I’ve found with players who have extensive experience in fantasy role playing. Which is ultimately forgetting that many modern conveniences exist. They’ll come up with complex plans that involve sending smoke signals to their man across town and you’ll have to remind them that phones exist and everyone has one. They’ll desperately try to think of a way to get across town without remembering that cabs or uber exists, or that they likely own a vehicle themselves. Similarly, based on the type of game and how deep these conspiracies go, law enforcement might get involved and could even be willing to help the players out, especially in a more rural setting where the sheriff is someone everyone knows personally. It can be hard, after years of charging into dungeons and pretty much murdering and stealing with reckless abandon, to go back into a game where you're suddenly a member of society and all those social contracts come back into play. To be fair, if I'm fighting a malevolent machine metaphor for modernity and the surveillance state, I'm ditching my mobile phone and Uber too. They're the easiest way to track you IRL, and it should be trivial for the God Machine to do that. Actually, an article I read on how Uber operates would be good for God Machine DMs. They scout out new territory, send agents in with basically unlimited resources to hire drivers, etc. I want a spell in modern supernatural games that lets you get an Uber from ANYWHERE, like the spirit world or the Outback.
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Jun 6, 2016 03:16
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I find I'm liking 13th Age more and more for story heavy high fantasy- it's simple enough while still working and not having the kind of "we gave this monster a Save or Die because tradition" red flags that made it into 5e. 4e I definitely favor for dungeon crawling and action heavy stuff.
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Jun 6, 2016 03:24
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:Pathfinder is a game. Beast is a crime scene in training. Beast is white supremacy wrapped up in Social Justice friendly language.
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Jun 6, 2016 03:27
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I'd feel better about all the Beast hate, justified though it may be, if so many White Wolf fans in this thread didn't have detailed fantasies about playing the Technocracy and Hunter and gruesomely crushing Mages and Changlings with overwhelming technology and state power. Why don't Werewolves- anti-modern eco-terrorists and gangs with a Klingon/Viking concept of 'honor' and a hair-trigger temper - get the same hate? They're the ones who'd justify all that Technocracy gun-wank. Hell if you want straw man reactionaries to fight, the guys who'd probably support building a wall around their territory, doing everything to make their territory great again, and who's entire lives are built around hunting trips with friends are probably your best bet. Count Chocula fucked around with this message at 03:41 on Jun 6, 2016 |
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Jun 6, 2016 03:33
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Beast is the old problem of protagonist centered morality at its extreme. Why are the Beasts misunderstood antiheroes and the Heroes unambiguously evil? Because the game says so. Rather than construct an actual moral framework for this, the designer just sorta bunts it. I think he had the idea of the bad guys being like MRAs and the like, but MRAs are guys who are dicks about women wanting equal rights and Heroes are overzealous in their pursuit of dream monsters who kill people. It was a bad fit and he couldn't make it work.
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Jun 6, 2016 03:42
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Maxwell Lord posted:I find I'm liking 13th Age more and more for story heavy high fantasy- it's simple enough while still working and not having the kind of "we gave this monster a Save or Die because tradition" red flags that made it into 5e. 4e I definitely favor for dungeon crawling and action heavy stuff. I genuinely think that 13th Age is a much better 'intro' to the hobby than D&D.
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Jun 6, 2016 03:51
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Jun 6, 2016 03:53
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Count Chocula posted:I'd feel better about all the Beast hate, justified though it may be, if so many White Wolf fans in this thread didn't have detailed fantasies about playing the Technocracy and Hunter and gruesomely crushing Mages and Changlings with overwhelming technology and state power. I think it's because all the really blatant racism is a much easier target when talking about oWoD werewolf. Like yeah they're eco terrorists, but the racism jumps out at you before you can really get to that part. Also honestly a lot of things justify the Technocracy; vampires, werewolves, hell basically everything but Changelings (they're annoying but not actually dangerous or justifiable to harm), wraiths, and mummies. Hence why the God Machine is a much better villain. It isn't responsible for any of the good parts of modernity that makes lives better, just the systemic oppression and conformity. Terrible Opinions fucked around with this message at 03:59 on Jun 6, 2016 |
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Jun 6, 2016 03:54
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In Parabola, ware the Serpent.
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Jun 6, 2016 04:02
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Maxwell Lord posted:I find I'm liking 13th Age more and more for story heavy high fantasy- it's simple enough while still working and not having the kind of "we gave this monster a Save or Die because tradition" red flags that made it into 5e. 4e I definitely favor for dungeon crawling and action heavy stuff. Bedlamdan posted:I genuinely think that 13th Age is a much better 'intro' to the hobby than D&D. I've noticed that while magic items and gold for one-use items are still a thing in 13th Age, it hasn't been as important. Given the main precedence of balancing things around pre-set encounters, the traditional dungeon crawl format of "explore rooms, maybe you'll encounter a few monsters, perhaps many" doesn't map as cleanly as more resource-driven management retroclones. Still, 13th Age is a fantastic game because you can still feel like a badass at level 1 and its gridless combat actually works as opposed to saying its optional but then measuring everything in 5 foot increments. Personally speaking, 13th Age would be a better intro than D&D were it not for the fact that Pathfinder and 5E are the Pepsi and Coke of tabletop RPGs. I can imagine explaining to total newcomers how 13th Age is a mashup of 3rd and 4th Edition and being asked "why don't we play D&D first?" A lot of 13th Age's selling points were pointed towards people experienced with said Editions than total newbies, so trying to get its appeal to unfamiliar folks would need different explanations. Like the fact that a solo boss encounter is actually doable in 13A, unlike Pathfinder and 5th Edition.
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Jun 6, 2016 04:02
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Libertad! posted:Personally speaking, 13th Age would be a better intro than D&D were it not for the fact that Pathfinder and 5E are the Pepsi and Coke of tabletop RPGs. I can imagine explaining to total newcomers how 13th Age is a mashup of 3rd and 4th Edition and being asked "why don't we play D&D first?" A lot of 13th Age's selling points were pointed towards people experienced with said Editions than total newbies, so trying to get its appeal to unfamiliar folks would need different explanations. I don't think a total newcomer is going to ask the one person with experience why they're playing the game the experienced person knows. I also don't know why your answer as the experienced player would include edition comparisons or why it would be anything other than "trust me, this is easier."
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Jun 6, 2016 04:11
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Count Chocula posted:I'd feel better about all the Beast hate, justified though it may be, if so many White Wolf fans in this thread didn't have detailed fantasies about playing the Technocracy and Hunter and gruesomely crushing Mages and Changlings with overwhelming technology and state power. The Garou are amply presented as dicks; you can root for them because they're fighting the corruption of the modern world and trying to save the Earth, even if their methods are weird and hosed up by the standard of a staid Midwesterner. Many of them are weird and hosed up, but you can comprehend why (for instance) Red Talons, who are born as wolves but raised to human intelligence by becoming werewolves, typically come to blame humans for the cause of all this bullshit. A Red Talon is an alien. Vampires are not portrayed as cosmically justified, either, to my memory. It's just that the game line, you know, is about vampires doing vampire poo poo, often while hanging out with other vampires. I think Masquerade had numerous books about hosed up weirdo spinoff cultures that followed in the wake of Kindred. Beasts seem to get written as cosmically justified.
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Jun 6, 2016 04:14
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Count Chocula posted:I'd feel better about all the Beast hate, justified though it may be, if so many White Wolf fans in this thread didn't have detailed fantasies about playing the Technocracy and Hunter and gruesomely crushing Mages and Changlings with overwhelming technology and state power. Forsaken Werewolves are emphatically not presented as good guys. They're  as gently caress, and play a crucial role in the setting's metaphysical 'ecology', but they're a necessary evil. The best they can do is confine their hunts to deserving targets, because they HAVE to hunt or they'll go insane. If anything, nWerewolf reads like a metaphor for any kind of organized, professional violence, and the struggle to keep one's humanity while fighting in a war where monsters thrive - too much Harmony, and you can't do your job; too little, and you risk going full Colonel Kurtz from Apocalypse Now.Beast, OTOH, is shallow and completely tone-deaf about its protagonists' monstrosity, in addition to doing nothing that other, better games haven't already accomplished.
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Jun 6, 2016 04:21
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Werewolf the Apocalypse was also originally published when Captain Planet was acceptable mainstream "awareness", and magical injuns and wise black servants were still "inclusive" things to do. On the one hand, we shouldn't act like we're super enlightened elites today, but on the other hand two decades really can make an incredible difference. As a relatively big part of RPG nostalgia, WtA is going to keep getting published, and as a nostalgia product it's never going to fully escape its now-embarrassing roots. Beast is a brand new IP, so it doesn't even have that weak excuse. It's just plain bad.
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Jun 6, 2016 04:27
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According to a John Lennon biography I read, he used to do the mirror hallucination trick as a kid. So maybe use that to summon him, Invisibles style.
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Jun 6, 2016 04:28
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That Old Tree posted:Werewolf the Apocalypse was also originally published when Captain Planet was acceptable mainstream "awareness", and magical injuns and wise black servants were still "inclusive" things to do. On the one hand, we shouldn't act like we're super enlightened elites today, but on the other hand two decades really can make an incredible difference. As a relatively big part of RPG nostalgia, WtA is going to keep getting published, and as a nostalgia product it's never going to fully escape its now-embarrassing roots.
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Jun 6, 2016 04:30
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That Old Tree posted:Werewolf the Apocalypse was also originally published when Captain Planet was acceptable mainstream "awareness", and magical injuns and wise black servants were still "inclusive" things to do. On the one hand, we shouldn't act like we're super enlightened elites today, but on the other hand two decades really can make an incredible difference. As a relatively big part of RPG nostalgia, WtA is going to keep getting published, and as a nostalgia product it's never going to fully escape its now-embarrassing roots. Yeah, the ultimate thing to remember when discussing Apocalypse really is that it was contemporaries with Captain Planet, and more or less explicitly was going out to be a grindhouse version of it. Basically every good and bad thing about it boils down to that single fact.
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Jun 6, 2016 04:31
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Maxwell Lord posted:I think he had the idea of the bad guys being like MRAs and the like, but MRAs are guys who are dicks about women wanting equal rights and Heroes are overzealous in their pursuit of dream monsters who kill people. It was a bad fit and he couldn't make it work. We have an ongoing review of a game having the literal patriarchy be the villain against feminist witches. It's a bad premise, with only the occasional writer doing a decent job of it. Handing political strawman to beat up on sucks the writers ability to write well rounded characters, create tension, or even "tough characters". As much as I dislike Miller or Ennis, the former and current can right compelling villains of opposing ideology. From limp wristed liberal psychologist right about the heroes relationship with his villains to Lesser Evil and Competent Dick Cheny.
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Jun 6, 2016 04:53
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Count Chocula posted:According to a John Lennon biography I read, he used to do the mirror hallucination trick as a kid. So maybe use that to summon him, Invisibles style. How does this work? Trying to google mirror hallucination trick just brought up a bunch of clickbait articles.
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Jun 6, 2016 04:55
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Nessus posted:Not every fictional work needs to relentlesly recreate and reassert Whig Progress. There isn't any "seems to" about it; in the original draft they were explicitly declared to be in the right to inflict horror and misery on both Heroes (who, back then, were created by Beasts and thus entirely the victim) and innocent, mundane bystanders. While it got toned down in some places in the rewrite, it's still largely present and noticeable. But yes, every other line makes no excuses for the monstrosity of its protagonists. Even Promethean is honest about the damage the Created do to their surroundings by their existence and doesn't make up excuses for why a Promethean would actually be totally justified in creating a Wasteland in the middle of a populated city or how people who are taken over by Disquiet are the real monsters and deserve to die. Also the other lines didn't have the creator comparing their detractors to hate groups when they were being written. If, say, someone had expressed concerns about the whole "crypto-facist eco-terrorist" thing going on in Werewolf, and in response one of the writers compared the critics to the KKK for being racist against werewolves, then I imagine people would have less goodwill towards that line too.
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Jun 6, 2016 05:02
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gradenko_2000 posted:How does this work? Trying to google mirror hallucination trick just brought up a bunch of clickbait articles. It's mentioned in that short fiction. Troxler fading is where if you're too focused on one spot, any unchanging stimulus begins to fade away. This is because our sensory cortexes have been adapted to edit out unimportant information to keep them from getting too taxed. It happens with all your senses, too. It's why you can edit out white noise or get used to pressures and pains. It's also why camouflage is so effective, it's because the visual cortex of the observer is editing out all those trees and motion of high grass and as long as they can't perceive a human silhouette (which is made easier because the human form becomes muddled past 100 meters) or there's no movement faster than what's going on in the background. Young Freud fucked around with this message at 05:17 on Jun 6, 2016 |
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Jun 6, 2016 05:10
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Thesaurasaurus posted:Forsaken Werewolves are emphatically not presented as good guys. They're I'd go as far as to argue they're not necessary. Nothing bad intrinsically happens if there isn't a werewolf pack around keeping territory. They're likely to run into conflict with things that do cause problems, but they're not the only beings that can wage those battles. Further, depending on the pack's interpretation of their territory and what is best for it, having werewolves around at work could easily be wholly harmful rather than merely a double-edged sword. That doesn't justify killing them all, of course. They're people, however dangerous people they are. Beast wouldn't be as bad if they kept more firmly to a tone of "we know we cause harm by our very nature, we are monsters; but we are alive and will make no apologies for doing what we must to thrive." Dave Brookshaw made a point in the World of Darkness thread that a game doesn't need aspirational protagonists, characters whom you would condone and wish to be like. You can have charismatic monsters, who are not aspirational characters or good people, but who are interesting people to follow. That's the part where Beast falls short. The deeds of the monsters are divided between being pitch black and deeply alienating (especially where the strong undertones of abuse bring the game's protagonists uncomfortably close to banal evils with which some are very familiar), and petty and milquetoast (the horrors of bureaucratic gridlock), and their words and deeds show a lack of cleverness or self-awareness. The things Beasts do aren't compelling or entertaining. They're not charismatic monsters. They're not interesting to follow. They're just shitheads, and bathetic shitheads at that. As for imputing value judgments onto weird cross-comparisons with the oWoD, that's not in my wheelhouse. I got into tabletop gaming long past that time and never had any particular opinion on the Technocracy or anything. I think the idea of Task Force VALKYRIE or the VASCU dispatching to address paranormal activity is definitely cool, but especially in the case of VALKYRIE, that doesn't mean I find the idea aspirational. I'd probably peg most of VALKYRIE's composition as violent thugs entertaining dreams of heroism. Ordinary humans, too, are perfectly capable of being charismatic monsters. They're interesting to follow.
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Jun 6, 2016 05:54
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Yeah, setting aside my issues with the game's creator and OPP's handling of that mess, as a game Beast is just... Lacking. People were talking about Geist lacking any real goals for your characters in the WoD thread, but Beast has that problem too. There's no arc to Beast-hood, there's just feeding in whatever simple or complex and disturbing manner you desire, and occasionally the GM will throw Heroes at you. If you clown on one hard enough, you become an Incarnate or something. And that's it. They're unlikable and uninteresting, their villains are pathetic and nonthreatening unless you let them be threatening by staying at a Satiety level where their nasty powers actually work on you, and there's no grand goal or theme or anything to the game as a whole, no defining struggle like every other line has. They're supposedly "crossover-friendly" but they don't really provide any reason for a crossover beyond Poochie-powers making everyone like them and thus presumably creating a "the friends of my friend are my friends too" situation; a crossover game would need a reason for everyone to be grouping together and doing stuff, as well as things for them to be doing, and unless you're doing a "Beast and friends pal around and torment people" game, Beasts don't provide that. If you're not, then the Beasts are superfluous and the game doesn't add anything except letting people be Beasts, meanwhile. Scrub the game of all the things that invoke abusive imagery, get rid of the forced and ill-conceived "oppressed people vs Gamergate/the WBC/etc." overtones, and pretend it wasn't made by a guy who thought it was a good idea to compare abuse victims to MRAs, and you're left with a game with questionable mechanics and no reason to play it. The plot of Beast is that you're a monster tormenting a neighborhood (or other locale) until people come to stop you, and then you kill them for trying to stop you, before going back to tormenting the normal people. Unless your group wants to be monsters that don't look like monsters and who get off on making people suffer, Beast isn't a game that offers you anything. They could have been a B-tier or C-tier antagonist for another line (people have pointed out the many similarities between them and other Werewolf antagonists, for example, and how Beast feeding would gently caress up the spiritual landscape in a way the wolves would not appreciate), but even removed of all the awful baggage Beasts just can't support a game on their own, and nothing they bring to the table makes them a particularly interesting choice for a crossover game either. Unless you're the kind of rear end in a top hat who needs everyone else to fawn over your character but can't actually write someone compelling enough to elicit that reaction genuinely, I suppose. Then the Kinship stuff is fantastic for you. Roland Jones fucked around with this message at 06:23 on Jun 6, 2016 |
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Jun 6, 2016 06:19
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Lynx Winters posted:I don't think a total newcomer is going to ask the one person with experience why they're playing the game the experienced person knows. I also don't know why your answer as the experienced player would include edition comparisons or why it would be anything other than "trust me, this is easier." I suppose I spoke poorly. I will definitely harp on its positives, but when folks go looking around I feel that the major impression they'll get of the RPG is it drawing from two already existing ones. That and Pathfinder/5E are more popular, so I feel one way or another newcomers will be inevitably roped away from more obscure games due to the sizeable number of gaming tables who do nothing but D&D/Pathfinder and have folks who adamantly refuse to play other games. But that's not a fault of 13A itself; more the hardliners in the hobby have a tendency to direct the flow of things.
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Jun 6, 2016 06:23
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NutritiousSnack posted:We have an ongoing review of a game having the literal patriarchy be the villain against feminist witches. It's a bad premise, with only the occasional writer doing a decent job of it. Handing political strawman to beat up on sucks the writers ability to write well rounded characters, create tension, or even "tough characters". As much as I dislike Miller or Ennis, the former and current can right compelling villains of opposing ideology. From limp wristed liberal psychologist right about the heroes relationship with his villains to Lesser Evil and Competent Dick Cheny. I think 'the literal patriarchy is the villiain against feminist witches' is a kickass premise for a game that resonates with both ancient mythological Archtypes and modern Tumblr culture. If done WELL (not Bellum Magica) and with good art (from Tumblr/zine culture, like the MegaHex/Meg and Mog stuff) it could capture a market as well as Vampire did in the 90s. It's certainly a premise with as much or more basis in mythology, fantasy literature (Angela Carter) and theory than 'musclemen and artillery wizards go into dark holes to beat up orcs'. Hell I know a bunch of artists, and if I thought I could do it in a non tone-deaf way I would. Edit: Nevermind, judging by your rap sheet you're against the premise because it makes you and those you support the villiains. Count Chocula fucked around with this message at 06:33 on Jun 6, 2016 |
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Jun 6, 2016 06:25
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Count Chocula posted:I think 'the literal patriarchy is the villiain against feminist witches' is a kickass premise for a game that resonates with both ancient mythological Archtypes and modern Tumblr culture. If done WELL (not Bellum Magica) and with good art (from Tumblr/zine culture, like the MegaHex/Meg and Mog stuff) it could capture a market as well as Vampire did in the 90s. Yeah, I think you could do a game about that well. Bellum Maga did not, and neither did Beast; Beast got so caught up in being a revenge fantasy it unintentionally invoked some horrible things in its first draft, and even after the rewrite the abusive overtones are still there. Arguably worse even, since now they Beasts are doing it for the victims' own good in theory. People (or, well, I, at least) don't dislike Beast for being a revenge fantasy. They dislike it for being a terrible revenge fantasy, that is full of abusive imagery that is at times uncomfortably close to things I and people I know endured in real life, and because the creator is a loving rear end in a top hat. And for just not being a good game. I think a good first step to making a good revenge fantasy game would be to look at it without the revenge fantasy part and see if the protagonists and antagonists are likable and reprehensible, respectively, without any knowledge of what they're supposed to represent. Beast and Bellum Maga, for example, fail utterly at this, because their protagonists are abhorrent and making them analogs to real life groups doesn't make them better, it just makes things even more uncomfortable and feels outright insulting on some levels, speaking as a person who Beasts are supposedly representing. Edit: Wait, is Bellum Maga another game where the witches torture and transform and basically murder people for shits and giggles? I might be mixing it up with the other awful witch game being reviewed here and having them blend together in my mind. Though I think that at least two of the awful witch games here were written by the same person, I'm not sure, so... Edit again: Looking it up, yeah, at least one Witch Girl Adventures person was involved with Bellum Maga. Also Bellum Maga had that awful trans trait in it so that's another mark against it; if you're trying to represent people make sure you actually know anything about who you're representing and don't write horrible offensive poo poo about them instead. Roland Jones fucked around with this message at 07:47 on Jun 6, 2016 |
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Jun 6, 2016 06:36
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Revenge fantasy against the patriarchy could be loving amazing, and done in a huge number of ways. Be it something invoking the wierd self destructive inhumanity of patriarchal cultures like a slight tweeked God Machine or overtly Patriarchal Invisible Clergy, or something confronting societal evils in a more grounded pseudo realistic way, or even just Inglorious Bestards but for woman/black people/any other given minority group. I think the problem is your starting position. Are you making a revenge fantasy game primarily because you're really mad an want catharsis through writing? If so I'm sorry but your game is probably garbage and you should keep it to yourself. Are you making a revenge fantasy game primarily because you believe the end product will be fun and/or interesting? If yes you game at least has a chance to be good. Hell I'd pay for DLC for the new Wolfenstein game where they just replaced the Nazis with Klansmen and made your character black, because Wolfenstein is loving fun.
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Jun 6, 2016 06:53
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 POWER PACKAGES To make a Primer character, you have to have Patron (Delta Prime) 5 and Duty (Delta Prime) -5. You don’t get these for free, you have to buy them but they offset the cost but this eats into your max negative quirks but. It’s bad. This is silly. You also get $500 and any relevant equipment you’d need and you can buy Authority to see where you stand in Delta Prime. Yes you can start play as an Assistant Director. Yes being able to do so is probably a severe oversight because then you can directly influence an entire regional office of Delta Prime. So let’s get into actual Delta powers.  BOOSTER The Booster is able to enhance another Delta’s powers. This is their only power but it’s a surprisingly handy one. Boosters are somewhat rare and Delta Prime loves to snap them up and keep them for high-power teams that need that extra oomph.  This time around there's no chance for regular art with every power set. They just have these mock Primer ID cards with the picture of the premade on it with every Delta. Boosting a Delta’s powers doubles some aspect of their powers. If it’s range, double the range. If it’s damage, double the dice you can roll and the bonus damage applied before it’s all rolled. If it’s radius, double the radius. A Booster has to poke a Delta’s bare skin with a bare hand to give them the boost and make a TN 5 Spirit roll. From there, as long as the two Deltas are within 60 feet of each other the boost lasts. Two Boosters can’t boost the same Delta, a Booster can’t boost two Deltas at the same time, if you boost a Snuffed Delta they’re just back to normal and a Booster can’t boost another Booster. The Boost lasts until the Booster turns it off or the Booster is stunned/falls asleep. When the boost ends, the targeted Delta has to make a TN 5 Stun check, add 5 to the TN for every full minute the Delta was boosted. For Tricks, they get: Extend Range: Use extra successes on the Spirit roll to extend the Booster/Delta range by 30 feet. Pretty good! Extend Time: Use extra successes on the Spirit roll to extend the time when it should have ended due to being out of range by one round per success.  No joke, I think this picture could be sincerely improved with her blowing like gum bubble. Thoughts on the Booster: The Booster is in a tricky situation of being highly focused on one thing and incredibly useful. Boosting a Blaster’s damage turns the damage roll into 10d6+20, boosting a Healer gives them +20 to healing, boosting a Tough’s armor gives them 40 loving armor, boosting Splodehog’s (Size 7 Bomber) damage gives them (4d6+8)x14 (maybe. I don’t know if it would also double the size bonus, it would be flat-out stupid if it did) for a torso boom. Hell being a Booster makes having Melee Buddies a lot more useful. The question is: what do you do when your boosted buddy is running around murdering people? I would say that the best course of action would be “pump up your Throwing, hang back and whip flash bangs at the enemy”. Your power doesn’t give you much to do, but you’re so loving handy so sort of just find a way to amuse yourself. On the more technical side? Extend Range is way better than Extend Time because a long leash is better than having to chase after your buddy and get there within X rounds or else they’re stunned and hosed up. There’s also the fact that needing to roll off Spirit doesn’t mean it’s guaranteed and you’re going to need to focus on your Spirit stat. The premade Booster is a good way of compromising with that, I feel. She’s got good combat stats to handle herself, she’s sort of on the squishy side, but she’s well built and she’s got a good attitude. I like this character. CHARGER A Charger can draw electricity from the world around them and fire it out in a burst. You basically shoot lightning from your hands with the Shooting skill.  Oh hai Cable. You're my favorite X-Man. Chargers get the ability to shoot lightning bolts from their hands that ignore all armor that isn’t insulated or power-based, Armor 5/- and complete invulnerability to electricity from any source period. For Tricks, they get:  Fry: If you get an extra success on a ranged attack against a device, car or whatever you can fry the power supply or destroy it. Either way it’s completely unusable. Superbolt: Spend an action to build the charge, adding +5 to the bonus damage up to +20. Requires an extra success to use and both hands to fire.  Don't allow him near wool, certain types of carpets or balloons. Thoughts on the Charger: To talk about the Charger, I have to talk about the Blaster again because the Charger feels like a kid copying their friend’s idea but trying to make them better. The Blaster is still the better option, it feels like. Energy blasts deal 5d6+10, electric blasts deal 10d6+10. The extra dice is misleading, it just offers more of a potential for explosions. They both really do the same amount of damage but if someone’s wearing rubber the electricity does nothing. The Blaster has the ability to protect themselves in melee with a Blast Punch, the Charger doesn’t. The Charger gets electric immunity which is nice but situational (and also what happened to the rule of “if a power set has more than two bonuses, they need a negative quirk”?). The big thing that puts the Blaster over the Charger is the fact that the Blaster gets Rate of Fire 3. That’s up to three energy blasts per attack as opposed to one lightning bolt and using the ROF actually makes the Blaster’s attacks more accurate and do more damage. Now, is the Charger still a powerful class? Yes, they absolutely are. It’s just compared to the other class that does what it does, it’s slightly weaker. Should you play the Charger? Sure, go ahead. It’s like the old thing about the difference between Tier 1 and Tier 2 D&D classes. The Charger is Tier 2 compared to the Blaster’s Tier 1: far, far more combat capable and dangerous than all the other classes in the books so far, but not the be-all-end-all combat machine. Likewise the premade is absolutely competent at what it is he does and that’s good. Bull’s Eye is no First Move but it’s good for headshots which would up the damage dice to a stupid 12d6+10. Shooting 5 and Speed 4? Good choice. Everything else is just whatever you feel like you should pick. COPYCAT The Copycat can mimic a skill or power they directly witness for the next 24 hours or until they want to drop it. Any power or skill. You can fly after seeing someone fly, Gadgeteer after seeing someone tinker, boost another Delta after watching a Booster boost.  If I see that Copycat one more time... In order to copy someone, you have to make a TN 5 Spirit roll and actually see it in person, no loopholes. If you want to copy a Tough’s armor, you have to watch their skin turn away an attack. If you copy something else, you drop the previous copy. And again, it only lasts 24 hours or until you willingly drop it. If you copy a skill you use that skill at the same level of the owner. If you have ranks in that skill, their rank replaces yours. For Tricks, they get: Copy Quirk: Use an extra success to copy a Quirk instead of a Power or Skill. There’s limits: it can be Ambidextrous but it can’t be Patron. Quick Learn: With three extra successes (aka a 20 result) on the Spirit roll, learn a Skill you don’t already know at Rank 1 for free. You can only do this once a week.  I know this is supposed to be a dynamic pose but RIP spine. Thoughts on the Copycat: Ehhhhh hmm. I won’t lie: I did not love the ability to mimic other Deltas when the Bargainer could do it. Your reliance on a Spirit roll means you’re fallible but it’s way better than the Bargainer’s way of doing it. You can do backup, basically. You’re the best at backing your team up or trying to turn the enemy’s power against them. However that doesn’t totally work when you consider that some Deltas have immunity to their own powers. But then could you just, say, spit fire at a Hot Shot and copy their fire immunity? I’d say you totally could. Okay actually the more I think about it, the more I’m interested in the way that the Copycat functions. Plus you can also help back up a Booster by boosting another teammate. I’d give this one a good maybe-yes for a recommendation, especially if you see enemy Deltas that you can get a leg up on by copying their own powers. I don’t know if Copy Quirk is worth it though and Quick Learn definitely isn’t on a blind loving Spirit roll. The premade seems to be built around the idea of mimicking the enemy’s powers and strutting up while shrugging off damage and then shooting them with armor-piercing rounds. It’s a functional game plan so props to her for that. HOUND The Hound has one power:  Using your power requires a TN 5 Spirit Roll. If it succeeds, you can sense the direction of the nearest Delta in 60 feet. Extra successes let you pick up another Delta. For Tricks, they get: Reach Farther: Extend your detection range by 60 feet for every extra success. Tag Delta: Use an extra success to mentally mark a single Delta so you’ll immediately know when you’re near them over the next 24 hours. Track Delta: Use an extra success to know the direction, distance and position of the Delta you pick up. So everything this power should be normally.  God this pose must hurt. Thoughts about the Hound: Nnnnnope. I can’t recommend this outside of an intrigue-based game. Can this be a power? Yes. Is it thematically appropriate to this book? Yes. Should it be playable? No. You have to pay a Trick task to use your power in a way that is actually useful and you’re rolling off Spirit so it’s not guaranteed. So yeah I can’t recommend that you play as a Hound. The premade is actually somewhat good for this tracker archetype idea. You still should not play as the Hound. INTERROGATOR Interrogators are living lie detectors. The Truth, of Defiance, is an Interrogator. Is this power infallible? No, you can give a misdirecting answer or you can give a technically true answer. A good Interrogator will just know how to ask the right questions and read people. Or beat the poo poo out of them.  "You gotta write BAD GIRL on my ID card, c'mon." The Interrogator can detect lies with a contested Spirit roll that they get +10 to. If the Delta wins, they know if they’re telling the truth or not. A failure means all they know is that they’re unsure. A disastrous roll means they think anything they say is the truth. You have to be directly in front of the target and roll for every lie. For every minute of uninterrupted interrogation, they have to make a Stun check with +1 to the TN for every minute after. If you’re stunned you have to take a break for a hour or the TN is increased by +2 for every minute you go forward. For Tricks, they get: Truthtell: Use three extra successes to guess at what the truth actually is. The GM should work this out. Tell Lie: Keep your +10 bonus if you’re being questioned by another Interrogator. If you get an extra success, convince the other Interrogator that you’re telling the whole truth.  The Baroness called, she wants her look back. Thoughts on the Interrogator: Again, nah. I would not play this. Still thematically good, still good for certain kinds of campaigns. If you’re doing a whole thing where it’s all social combat and your buddy is a Charmer, you’re going to be their best friend. Aside from that, the Interrogator is really a niche role. I can’t recommend it. I like her outfit, it’s 80s X-Men as fuuuuuck. But I mean, look, she has a gun she doesn’t even know how to use. She strictly stays back at the ranch and does behind-the-scenes work. She’s also really smug and not in the entertaining character way. WATCHER Watchers have enhanced eyesight as part of their Delta powers. That’s kind of it. They can use their eyesight in different ways but all they have is super visions.  Doing that eye thing must gently caress up a physical roll of photos something fierce. Watchers have Delta Vision which is Superman-style X-Ray vision (as in it does not in fact use x-rays). You can only see through the things you want to and as long as there’s a little bit of light in the room you can see perfectly. Wherever there is a little bit of light, you can see into that area. You can turn the vision on with a TN 5 Spirit Roll. For Tricks, they get: Infrared Vision: See in the complete dark perfectly and see heat patterns with an extra success. Your eyes glow red when you use this. Microwave Vision: Use an extra success to emit microwaves that pass through paper, glass and plastic but hurts anyone within your gaze, automatically dealing 1d6 damage per round. Your eyes glow blue when you use this power and the air shimmers in front of your face. Telescopic Vision: Magnify things up to 20 times, see things from far away with an extra success.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBRREj1CLpQ Thoughts on the Watcher: The Watcher is not a recommended class up until Microwave Vision. As long as it hits bare skin, it deals damage and it can deal wounds over time. It's not massive damage because it doesn't pierce armor but it still targets everything. This is honestly the most redeeming part of the class, even if it makes you highly visible that you're inflicting radiation damage on people with your eyes. Aside from that, I can't recommend the Watcher unless you want to be creepy with your special eyes. Man there are a lot of classes in this book that need Spirit rolls to use your powers. Though it's pretty nice The Watcher premade is okay. He's got the microwave vision which is really the most important part. His dialogue is...silly at best. He's the black Delta on the front of the book. It's...90s. He does make a good point though, the Watcher does pair well with the Hound. AWARDS Most Likely To Kill A Room Full Of People Without Breaking A Sweat: Definitely the Charger. Second place for direct damage: a Watcher sufficiently maintaining microwaves long enough. Honorable mention for situational combat prowess: the Booster making someone crazy powerful or the Copycat getting something good for the occasion. Best Battlefield Control/Exploitation: The Copycat for being able to play off the enemy and counter them. Most Pigeonholed Into One Job: Everyone. A whole lot of everyone. If I had to pick a specific answer? Direct tie between the Hound and the Interrogator. Melee Class Most Affected By Dex-Focus in Game Engine: Nobody really except the Copycat if they get dealt a bad spread to choose from. Also I guess the Booster's need to poke someone to boost them. Peak 90s: Tie between the Watcher premade's dialogue or everyone's Delta Prime outfits. Most Cribbed Directly From Deadlands: Nobody explicitly but I will say the Interrogator for having a power set for a plot-important NPC not revealed in the first book. Best Optional Combat Rule Shenanigans: The Watcher's microwave vision. You can skip taking it, it's technically optional. Don't know why you would. Most Broken Class (Not In A Good Way): New Skill: Lip-reading (Smarts): TN 5 to read lips. This exists pretty much for Watchers to take advantage of with their special eyes. Hilariously, the premade doesn't have this. NEXT TIME: The updated Gadgeteer rules. They're not that long but I don't want this installment to run too long. Vox Valentine fucked around with this message at 17:13 on Jun 6, 2016 |
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Jun 6, 2016 06:56
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